Saturday, January 28, 2012

Review: The Future of Us

It's 1996, and Josh and Emma have been neighbors their whole lives. They've been best friends almost as long - at least, up until last November, when Josh did something that changed everything. Things have been weird between them ever since, but when Josh's family gets a free AOL CD in the mail,his mom makes him bring it over so that Emma can install it on her new computer. When they sign on, they're automatically logged onto their Facebook pages. But Facebook hasn't been invented yet. And they're looking at themselves fifteen years in the future.

By refreshing their pages, they learn that making different decisions now will affect the outcome of their lives later. And as they grapple with the ups and downs of what their futures hold, they're forced to confront what they're doing right - and wrong - in the present
-- Goodreads

My Thoughts:
I absolutely loved 13 Reasons Why, so I was incredibly excited to hear that Jay Asher wrote a new book. I haven’t read anything by Carolyn Mackler, but I’d heard good things. Beyond the authors, the premise of the book sounded amazing (especially since I grew up in the 90s), so needless to said I expected to totally love The Future of Us.

Sadly, I didn’t love The Future of Us; I wanted to really badly, but there was something about the characters and the plot that prevented me from really getting into the story and loving it. The biggest reason I didn’t really like the book was Emma. She drove me crazy right from the beginning and continue to irritate me through the whole book. My main issue with Emma was her focus on her future relationships and husbands; she doesn’t seem to care about anything else. I found it really odd that a teen would be so obsessed with who she marries in ten years. Maybe teen girls care about that, but when I was sixteen marriage was the last thing on my mind. It’s very hard for me to really like a book if I don’t like the main character.

Ok, that’s enough about Emma now on to the good stuff. I did actually like Josh quite a bit and thought that his character was totally believable. His reactions to what they learn on Facebook and how he changed over the course of the book seemed completely plausible to me.

The whole premise of the book was really interesting and I really liked that not everything Josh and Emma did had a completely logical simple effect on their future. That seemed so real; we don’t really know how our tiny actions change things and Asher and Mackler focused on that, as well as how big decisions change things.

I didn’t hate the book, but I was disappointed. This was a tough one for me; I had issues with the characters and a few key plot elements, but overall the story was interesting and the writing was great. I just didn’t end up loving it. A lot of other people did love it, so maybe this one just wasn’t for me.

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About Me

I recently completede my Master's in Publishing from Portland State University where I studied all things publishing and YA. I've recently rediscovered YA lit and have become obsessed with everything that's going in YA right now. Hopefully one day (likely many, many years from now) I will open my own publishing company devoted to Young Adult and Children's books, but for now I will be reading and writing about YA and whatever else strikes my fancy.

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